


The Adventure Of The Repellent Philanthropist (1879)

by Cerdic519



Series: Elementary 221B [22]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Destiel - Freeform, F/M, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Untold Cases of Sherlock Holmes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 02:41:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10548678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerdic519/pseuds/Cerdic519
Summary: Case 15: A young gentleman who wants answers results in the two of us travelling to the far south-west, and a discovery of a part of Holmes' life of which I had hitherto been unaware.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [princessgolux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/princessgolux/gifts).



It is well known that my friend's first case with me was that of the “Gloria Scott”, when we met in Oxford some five years before the events described here. But he was also tangentially involved in one earlier case, of which I only became aware of thanks to the curiosity of the young gentleman who came to our rooms in Cramer Street one blustery September morn. Mr. Stuart Billesley was a tall young fellow of around twenty years of age, and very slender of build. He had flaxen, almost white hair, and seemed alarmingly assured of himself for one so young.

“I have a rather curious matter to lay before you, Mr. Holmes”, he said, and I detected what was definitely a West Country accent in his voice. “I do not know if you would be prepared to take it on, but I wish for someone to be found.”

“You have lost someone?” Holmes asked.

“Not exactly”, he said, frowning. “You see, it is like this. My mother was Miss Alice Springfield.”

The name meant nothing to me, but it clearly had some resonance with my friend. I had known him long enough that, even though there was little in the way of outward expression, I understood that that name had affected him in some way.”

“Who is this lady?” I asked. Holmes turned to me.

“She was involved in a society scandal in 'Fifty-Nine, when I was only five years old”, he said. “One of my first memories, i did not draw the media attention that it would normally have merited, as it happened just days after the contentious general election of that year. Miss Springfield was engaged to be married to young Lord Toby Hawke, but she eloped with a lowly Welsh bank clerk called Mr. Milton Carew, and was not heard of until six months later, when it was reported that she had died in childbirth and that Mr. Carew had fled to the New World. Her family had long disowned her; poor Lord Hawke blew his brains out when he was told of his former fiancée's passing.”

“I was that child”, our guest explained, “and I was subsequently raised by my maternal grandfather, Mr. Adolphus Springfield. I have received nothing but kindness and consideration from him, which makes the matter infinitely more complicated.”

“How so?” Holmes asked.

“I turned eighteen just over a year ago”, Mr. Billesley said. “At that time, I came into a substantial inheritance as of right. The monthly allowance that I now receive is more than adequate to allow me to live as a gentleman of the highest quality.”

I frowned.

“Then what is the problem?” I asked.

“My grandfather is one of the trustees of my inheritance”, the young man explained, “and his son, my uncle Thomas, is another. One condition of it is that I am not to know whence the money comes. But I am curious.”

“I might advise you at this point to remember the story of Pandora's Box”, Holmes said sagely. “She pried into some matter that she had been warned not to, and humanity as a whole came to regret it. I dare say that it would be possible to find out who is behind your current good fortune, but surely you are aware that doing that may cause them to stop helping you?”

The young man looked anxious.

“You see”, he said slowly, “I have done some thinking on the matter myself. It cannot be from my grandfather's family; they are well-off enough, but not to supply this sort of money, nor do I see why they would. The Hawkes are rich, but they, quite understandably, will have nothing to do with me; their lawyer communicated that fact quite clearly when I came of age. And there is something else that is strange, which you should know if you choose to try to help me.”

“Go on”, Holmes said.

“My cousin George, Thomas' son, is a friend”, he said. “Of course he cannot help me directly without going against his family, but he did tell me something which I think may be of import. The Springfield estates are, as you may know, in Derbyshire and Leicestershire. Yet for the past three years, my grandfather has been receiving letters, and the frequency of those increased around the time of my birthday. The postmark was a place called Hugh Town, in Cornwall.”

Again, there was the slightest, almost imperceptible reaction from my friend to that name. I began to worry that there was far more to this case than met the eye.

“I do not know if I can help you”, Holmes said. “But if you leave us your card, I promise that I will do what I can, with the contacts I have.”

“Thank you, sir.”

+~+~+

I did not press the matter, even when the following day we went early to Paddington, to catch a train all the way to Penzance. Holmes seemed unusually lost in thought, even for him, and I sensed that he did not want to talk.

We obtained some refreshments at Bristol, and were past Exeter before he spoke.

“Have you ever wondered as to how I became a detective in the first place?”

Of course I had. But this was Holmes, who could be terrifying at the worst of times, even with his coffee and his (and half of my) bacon. I had never felt inclined or brave enough to ask.

“I assumed that you would come to tell me”, I said, “in the fullness of time.”

“I think that that time is now”, he said, looking unusually serious, even for him. “This may be a dark case, Watson, and I doubt that I will be able to achieve much for poor Mr. Billesley, except possibly to preserve his inheritance.”

“Why do you call him 'poor Mr. Billesley'?” I asked.

“We shall see if the worst is indeed true before I tell you that”, Holmes said. “First, as to how I became a consulting detective.”

I leant forward, all agog.

“Our little adventure with the “Gloria Scott” in Oxford was my first real case”, he said, “but I had developed an interest in crime and the law from a young age. The summer before I met you, I had returned to the family house in London for the holidays. It will not surprise you that, with my family, I found little in the way of peace there.”

I smiled at that.

“One day, I went to a local tavern”, he said. “Whilst I was there, a constable new to the area came in, and three of the local lads starting mocking him. I pointed out that they should desist from their actions, as they too could not help the way that they looked.”

“Henriksen?” I guessed.

“Henriksen”, he affirmed. “A mere constable then, and he helped me escort the gentlemen off the premises. Forcibly. I then stood him a drink – fortunately he was just off duty and on his way home – and we talked about various cases that he was on. He did not use any real names, of course.”

(It was odd that our conversation should have turned to our police friend, because Holmes had just been instrumental in helping him out in a personal matter. Henriksen and his family liked to holiday in the Lancashire resort of Blackpool, but this year they had gone instead to a friend of his good lady wife's in Sussex. Of course this was also the year that the famous Blackpool Illuminations first started, and Mrs. Henriksen has mourned the fact that she was to miss that event. Being aware of this, Holmes had covertly arranged for the family to have an extra week off 'due to an administrative error', and they had just decamped to their favourite seaside guest-house there).

“Of course”, I said.

“We struck up a friendship, and took to meeting there once a week”, Holmes said. “The last time before I had to return to Bargate, he seemed unusually depressed – yes, I know he has the face for it, Watson! - so I asked why. Apparently Lord Hawke was 'making difficulties'.”

“I thought you said that he died?” I said.

“Not Lord Toby, his brother Theobald, who had just inherited the title”, he said. “You may remember that, after the American Civil War, relations between our two great nations were difficult for some considerable time. Matters were just easing around then, and Lord Theobald had been able to discover that Mr. Milton Carew was not listed amongst those entering that country at the time that he had purportedly fled there. Unfortunately the new lord had also acquired a seat in the House of Lords, so he was able to demand some action from those in charge, although how they expected the Metropolitan Police Service to solve a case from over a decade ago – well, it was some demand. To cap it all, Lord Theobald was also a friend of the then-current Commissioner, Sir Edmund Henderson, so naturally all the work fell on the likes of Henriksen and those at what is, quite accurately, called 'the coal-face'.”

I found it hard to imagine the ponderous sergeant as a fresh-faced constable, even though that had been just six years ago. The slight smile on my friend's face told me that he knew what I was thinking, as usual.

“And you think that this Mr. Milton Carew may have instead slipped over to the Scilly Isles?” I asked. “They are remote enough, even in this day and age.”

He nodded.

“I met young Lord Toby Hawke one time, just before his life fell apart”, he said, his face softening. “A kinder, more generous human nature I have seldom encountered; there was not a bad bone in his body. The human rat who caused him to end his life so young should be made to pay for his crimes.”

I had a nagging suspicion that it might not be that easy – and typically, this was to be one of those few times when I would be proven right.

+~+~+

Even with the best offices of the Great Western and Cornwall Railway Companies, it was still the best part of a day before we arrived in Penzance, and with it still being technically summer, we were grateful to find a small guest-house that could accommodate us. Holmes told me that he expected us to have to spend at least one night on the islands, in Hugh Town, the port and capital where the ferry docked. I was just grateful for a bed, and that I was tired enough to sleep despite my concerns for my friend in this case.

The following day we caught the ferry early in the morning to the islands, which lie some thirty miles off the south-western tip of Cornwall. It is believed that in times past they may have been connected to the rest of England when sea-levels were lower than they are today, and they were both surprisingly warm and quite beautiful. Hugh Town was quaint in a tourist-y way, and we managed to find a good hotel there before Holmes set about his inquiries. I suppose that I should not have been surprised that my brilliant friend was able to manage some Cornish to charm his way past the local people's innate suspicions of outsiders, and by the afternoon of that same day, he had something.

“There is a religious community on Annet”, he said as we stood on the quayside, “the island beyond St. Agnes. And six years ago, someone arrived to that island and had a cottage built for them, or at least rebuilt from a ruin. I did not get a name, but the people I spoke to were quite sure that he was not from the West Country.”

“Hiding out here”, I muttered. “Is he the one behind the money being given to young Mr Billesley, do you think?”

“It seems possible”, Holmes frowned. “But leopards do not change their spots, and I similarly doubt that a criminal can change his true nature. Tomorrow we shall take the ferry over and see. I had better go and ask out landlady if she will lay on some supper for us.”

“Actually, I thought we might try a restaurant that I found in the town”, I said. “I think you would like it.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because they serve six different types of bacon! And coffee!”

He shook his head at me, but I definitely caught the smile.

+~+~+

Annet was so small as to not merit its own ferry service, although the St. Agnes mail boat continued to there when necessary before returning to Hugh Town. However, it naturally waited for the boat from the mainland, so would not sail until the afternoon. Holmes was able to persuade a young fisherman – he could surely not have been more than eighteen years of age, if that - named Lowen Trevelyan to take us over that morning, and to call for us some hours later. I would have been grateful, but I did not like the way that the athletic young blond man eyed my friend up and down as if he was a piece of meat, and the fisherman a starving dog. Holmes looked an even worse mess than usual with the wind off the Atlantic playing havoc with his hair, and once more I wondered as to the power he had to make people look at him that way.

No, it was not Miss Featherstone and her come-hither eyes all over again. And no, I was not jealous.

I was not!

The island of Annet was tiny, consisting of two sections of about three hundred yards each in length joined by a narrow isthmus. There was a tiny harbour on the north-west corner of the island, and a wooden pier into which we were able to scramble. With one last leer our fisherman left us to, presumably, go fish (I did not glare after him, whatever anyone with blue eyes later claimed).

A barely discernible path led past first the cottage that we had been told about, then to a small shepherd's hut by the isthmus before entering the southern section of the island and reaching a little monastery. We walked to the cottage, and Holmes knocked at the door. It was opened by an elderly man, who had to have been in his sixties at least. Definitely not Mr. Milton Carew who, I knew, had to be around forty, unless he was a master of disguise.

“I am sorry to bother you”, Holmes sad politely, “but I am looking for a friend of mine, a Mr. Pasco Meredith. He writes to me often, but his handwriting is so terrible that I only know that he lives at a cottage close by an abbey on one of the outlying islands.”

The man nodded.

“Then it's probably Tresco you'd be wanting”, he said, his Cornish accent broad and clear. “That's the only other religious place of any size out here.”

“This place seems wonderfully remote”, Holmes observed. “Have you lived here long, may I ask?”

“Mary and I, we've lived here the past six year”, he said. “We were lucky, I suppose; the chap who was having this place done up drowned when he went out too far one day, the place all but ready for him to move into. His brother inherited and wanted a quick sale, as he lived up North somewhere.”

Holmes thanked the man and apologized for disturbing him, and we left.

“So he died”, I said heavily. 

To my surprise Holmes shook his head, and pointed across the island to where the whitewashed buildings of the little abbey sparkled in the noonday sun.

“I think that that man was lying to us”, he said, “especially given the proximity of a place where men sometimes go to either lose or find themselves. An excellent hiding-place, where no questions – or at least, no difficult questions – tend to be asked. Let us test that theory.”

+~+~+

We were admitted to the presence of the Father Abbot, a small, almost round and bespectacled man in his sixties. I could see why this place, like Lindisfarne and Iona, had been set up; the solitude was what some men craved, even if I was sure that it would have driven me mad with boredom in next to no time.

“I am here on a somewhat delicate matter”, Holmes began. “I am afraid that I must be blunt. Six years ago, a man came to your abbey and asked for admission as a brother. I know that it is not the way to question those who seek refuge in a holy place, but I must tell you that this man was implicit in two crimes.”

The abbot smiled benevolently. He would have made a good poker player, I thought.

“And what crimes may they have been, sir?” he asked.

“The courting and abduction of another man's fiancée”, Holmes said. “And the subsequent suicide of that man, when the abducted lady died in childbirth.”

“Neither of those are what a court would consider chargeable offences”, the abbot pointed out.

“I merely require to speak with the brother involved”, Holmes said. “As you say, he cannot be brought before a court to be charged in either instance, although as you and I both know, he will like all of us one day stand before a higher court that operates on divine justice, not English law, and I firmly believe that he will be found guilty at that time and pay the appropriate penalty. But there is someone else involved – an innocent young man – and more lives may well be damaged if I do not speak with the man that you have here.”

The abbot weighed his request, then nodded.

“You may talk with Brother Kenver”, he said. “He is in the herbarium, the walled garden that was to the left as you came in.”

Holmes stood and bowed.

“Thank you, Father.”

+~+~+

“It reminds me a little of my school in London”, he said as we walked back to the herbarium. “That was run by a religious order; a very strict one.”

“I bet you were top of your class, though”, I said.

“Yes.”

I spluttered at his confidence, until he smiled at me.

“Everything except art”, he said. “I cannot draw for toffee, as the saying goes. We are here.”

The herbarium was small but well-ordered. A middle-aged monk was resting on a bench outside a small shed, surveying his domain.

“Brother Kenver?” Holmes asked. 

The man looked at us suspiciously. 

“Or should I say, Mr. Milton Carew?"

“Do I know you gentlemen?” the monk inquired frostily. 

“I am here on behalf of one Mr. Stuart Billesley”, Holmes said.

There. A definite reaction, if constrained.

“Should I know that name?” the monk asked.

“Most fathers know their own sons”, Holmes said mildly.

I could see the moment that he gave up the pretence. His shoulders sagged.

“How much do you know?” he demanded.

“I know most of it”, Holmes said. “You wooed and won Miss Alice Springfield, despite her being affianced to Lord Toby Hawke. From the dates, you clearly consummated your relationship some three months before your flight which, I would conjecture, was brought on by the discovery that she was pregnant. Since young Lord Hawke was very traditional in his beliefs, the baby could not be his. Your family hid you until the birth, which claimed not only Miss Springfield's life but, eventually, that of poor Lord Hawke, who could not stand the shame of thus being cuckolded.”

I stared at the monk in shock.

“You were in a most curious position", Sherlock continued. "Circumstance had made you immensely rich – you inherited wealth from your late mother's family, as she was the last of her line – but your family, although they had stood by you for the child's sake, not unnaturally wanted nothing more to do with a man with two deaths on his hands. I know that you came here and, suspecting that you might be tracked one day, arranged for the cottage to be rebuilt and then yourself disappeared into the abbey. You gave the cottage to a couple who promised to spin a story of your demise should anyone ask, which they did to us earlier today. I have only one question for you. Why a monk?”

The man smiled sourly. 

“Toby was an ass, but he was a good man”, he said. “When he ended himself like that – I nearly lost it. The family took Stuart from me and I was glad, because they could raise him right, but I had nothing. Yes, the money, but every time I closed my eyes, I could see that young man lying there, bleeding to death because of me.”

I shuddered at the image.

“The monastery was my brother Peter's idea. He arranged for a family he knew to move into the refurbished cottage, and as you say, to tell anyone who asked that they obtained it when the man having it fitted out for him died in an accident. Peter would use my money for Stuart and some other charities that I knew Lord Toby had supported, and I would quit the world for here. Why have you come after me?”

“Because your son wished to find out the source of his wealth”, Holmes said. 

“You have to stop him!” the man exclaimed.

“You are responsible for the deaths of two people!" Holmes said coldly. “Lord Toby Hawke was a damnably fine human being, and the world is infinitely poorer without him. Despite your subsequently making the best of matters, I do not 'have' to do anything. However, Mr. Billesley is my client, and his interests are paramount in this. I take it that you yourself have no interest in his fund?”

The monk shook his head.

“It is run by my brother now”, he said. “I signed over all control to them. The only say I got was that Alice's family had to be seen right, and he did that.”

“Then, I have certain contacts who will, I am sure, be able to produce some convincing documents to the effect that you did indeed 'drown' off the coast of this island”, Holmes said coolly. “Watson, it is time for us to leave.”

He strode angrily away, and I scuttled after him.

+~+~+

The leering 'Lowen' picked us up about an hour later, and although I was pleased to see Holmes distracted from his depression, the fact that they conversed in a mixture of English and Cornish depressed me instead. And the fisherman seemed to take far too long to help Holmes out of the boat once we returned to Hugh Town. I silently thanked God that he lived way out here, and we would never see him again.

(Looking back, I should have known that the Good Lord was looking down on me and smirking).

“I do not like it”, Holmes said as we sat in his bacon-serving restaurant that evening. “But I am, as I said, employed by a client, and his interests must come first where possible. Even if his father is, to all effects and purposes, guilty of two deaths.”

“Morally, but not legally”, I pointed out. “You cannot save everyone, my friend.”

He looked at me gratefully.

“I am lucky to have you”, he said softly.

I blushed. I was the lucky one.

+~+~+

In our next case, a shocking discovery right in the middle of London means that Holmes has to enlist some noble support.


End file.
